Finance Minister Bill Morneau is reflected on a monitor while speaking during a news conference about the state of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion in Ottawa on May 16, 2018.CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters
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Pay to Kinder Morgan?
Re Ottawa Vows To Cover Costs Of B.C. Trans Mountain Delay (May 17): If the federal government ends up reimbursing Kinder Morgan for its construction delays on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, it should then recover the payments by an add-on to income tax paid by B.C. residents.
If they were foolish enough to elect the Horgan government, they should bear the burden.
George Stevens, Vancouver
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The federal government indeed has “clear jurisdiction” over “interprovincial trade” (Pipelines And Political Risk – editorial, May 17). However, no government in Canada appears to have clear jurisdiction over “environmental protection.” It seems that concept, including the crisis of climate change, was absent from the minds of our constitutional drafters when they divided power way back in 1867.
Unfortunately for Alberta and Ottawa, oil pipelines are about both of those issues in “pith and substance.” So the B.C. government has a point.
We can only hope our courts will understand this problem better than our media does.
Chris Rapson, Toronto
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All businesses assess risks before embarking on a project of any size, or they certainly should. Kinder Morgan’s risks of profit or loss with the Trans Mountain expansion are no different, and the taxpayers of Canada certainly aren’t responsible for them. If the pipeline doesn’t go ahead, Kinder Morgan will write off its costs like any other business. No one compensates the hundreds of Canadian businesses that have to close each year because market conditions changed.
Judy Lightwater, Victoria
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I am disgusted with the Trudeau-Morneau government – willing to pay off a foreign-funded fossil-fuel company with our hard-earned tax dollars. They have betrayed today’s Canadians and future generations. They pretend to care about eco-justice, but their actions reveal their true colours.
Kate Chung, Toronto
Filed under secret
Re Top Court Pulled Case Notes Years Before Embargo (May 16): It’s disappointing to see that the Supreme Court of Canada is just another bureaucracy. One would have hoped for a higher standard from the highest court.
Ron Freedman, Toronto
In the year 2118 ...
Re PM Calls For Probe Into Israel’s ‘Excessive Force’ Against Civilians (May 17): In a hundred or two hundred years, when things have finally settled down in the Mideast, an attractive, progressive Israeli prime minister will stand in the Knesset and address the Palestinians living in reservations (formerly known as refugee camps) saying, “While we won’t return your land, we do apologize for any past wrongs.”
Norman Rosencwaig, Toronto
Air Canada reprimand
Re Air Canada Cedes To Beijing Over Taipei Relisting (Report on Business, May 16): By yielding to pressure from Beijing, Air Canada is allowing a violator of freedoms of expression to dictate how a free enterprise in Canada should run its business.
Taiwan is Canada’s fifth-largest-trading partner in Asia. More importantly, Taiwan has resisted isolation, survived rejection, and has built a strong economy and vibrant democracy. It deserves better treatment from Air Canada.
Jonathan Yang, Mississauga
Indigenous scholarship
Re School Decried For Assigning Residential-School Class To White Professor (May 12): As a Canadian of Ojibwe, Métis and European ancestry, along with a PhD specializing in Canadian military history, I am appalled and disappointed with the notion that only Indigenous people can teach Indigenous history. By all accounts, with her specialization in Indigenous history and research record, Prof. Martha Walls is eminently qualified to teach the subject.
To illustrate the absurdity of this view, reverse the situation and ask if it makes sense to suggest that I cannot teach or research Canadian military history because of my Indigenous background. Furthermore, the use of the term “settler scholar” is not simply descriptive, but has a pejorative connotation. Its use should cease immediately.
Bertram C. Frandsen, Ottawa
No sympathy on offer
Re Vancouver Homeowners Say They Can’t Stomach Tax Bump (May 15): Home owners in many areas of Vancouver are wealthy landowners. Maybe these homeowners didn’t set out to be wealthy but they are now. Wealthy people should pay appropriate taxes. These people don’t want to defer their taxes, a most reasonable accommodation on the part of the government, nor do they want to acknowledge that taxes are tied to the value of their homes.
It’s hard to believe that anyone who owns a house that isn’t worth many millions could be sympathetic to the complaints of the property multimillionaires.
Honey Halpern, Vancouver
Hazy benefits?
Re Medical Marijuana Is A Mirage (May 15): Margaret Wente is right: It is too late to do much about controlling marijuana promotion and use as a cure-all. But why is this even an issue when pseudo-medicine practitioners such as naturopaths and homeopaths are preferred by many over qualified physicians with six or more years of training?
Sudhir Jain, Calgary
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Margaret Wente focuses on marijuana’s famous euphoria-producing chemical THC. Of course the coming legal recreational market will sell strong THC weed, and people will buy it to get high, and make all kinds of unsubstantiated claims as to its health benefits.
The real medical benefits, however, will be from the anti-inflammatory, plant-derived CBD, which, in extracted form, will not produce a direct “high,” but rather targeted effects. As CBD’s potential is studied and maximized in the coming years, scoffers from her generation will thank their lucky stars for its availability in the twilight of their lives.
M.J. Martino, Rose Bay, N.S.
Weighty disconnect
Re Worth Its Weight (May 12): Martin Patriquin shares a shocking statistic: Obesity in Canadians is nearly three times what it was 30 years ago. But to suggest that obesity is more a product of genes than of appetite and exercise carries with it the absurd implication that our genes have radically changed in 30 years.
This misses the point: When you live in a culture that teaches you to disconnect from your body, your neighbours and your environment, no amount of food will fill the emptiness you feel within.
Philip Shepherd, author, Radical Wholeness; Toronto